Gratitude




Today is all about showing gratitude and there are a lot of people I am thankful for being a part of my writing life—readers, bloggers, authors, agents, editors, publishers, publicists, crit partners, and the chupacabra.

Hey, the chupacabra needs love, too. As does the were llama.

There’s one person that I wanted to shine the spotlight on, because if it weren’t for her, I probably wouldn’t be where I’m at today. Sure, I might’ve eventually gotten a book deal, but who really knows? I don’t. So this woman was key in jump-starting my publishing career. She took a chance on me when no one else would.

I started writing Half-Blood in 2007 and didn’t get the gonads until 2009/2010 to go out on submission with it. Hey, you can’t fail if you don’t try, right? I queried about fifty to seventy agents, received a lot of requests for partials and fulls, collected an iceberg size amount of rejections, and got very close to representation offers. Some wanted me to take Half-Blood and make it into an adult book, but I really wasn’t feeling that idea and by the time I decided to shelve the book (i.e. put it away for a while) I’d already written Unchained and was working on Cursed. One day, I entered a query contest on Kate Kaynak’s Disgruntled Bear blog. (Aspiring authors, entering query contests are an EXCELLENT way of getting feedback, btw) I entered the Cursed query, and while I didn’t win, I got awesome feedback. And I also saw that her publishing company, Spencer Hill Press, was open for submissions.

I thought about Half-Blood, sitting all lonely in my computer and decided what the hell. I submitted the query and the first ten pages, expecting a rejection or nothing. There’s a lot of silence in the publishing world.  BUT that same night I received a request for the full. I sent it, still not expecting much. BUT about twenty four hours later, I had an offer of publication. That was over three years ago, and I’m still in shock.

Kate took a huge chance on me. I was a debut author, un-rep’d at that time and really had no idea what I was doing, but she did take a chance and because of that, she has my eternal gratitude.

Thank you, Kate!    

Comments

  1. I so connect with this! I sold my debut to an editor (I was also unrepped), and will always be grateful that he took a chance on me!

    ReplyDelete
  2. My debut novel Covering the Sun with My Hand is about to be published in May or June. I, too, had a similar patterns of 'almosts' until my editor read about three submitted chapters and immediately, the next day, offered a contract. It's meant to be! Best to you!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment